


Where Do We Go From Here

by aunt_zelda



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Anxiety, Arguing, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Panic, Planning Adventures, Teamwork
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-25 17:08:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19750093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aunt_zelda/pseuds/aunt_zelda
Summary: Post episode 69, the Mighty Nein are at a loss. What should they do, where should they go next?Beau starts to write a list.





	Where Do We Go From Here

**Author's Note:**

> Started writing this right after episode 69. Partly just to get out some of my post-episode emotions, partly a result of some frustrations I've had with the campaign for a bit. I think something like this could be really beneficial to them, to help them focus their goals and plan their next move.

None of them sleep easily, huddled in the loft above the store. Beau hears Jester crying and pretending she isn’t crying. She sees Caduceus sitting against a wall, meditating perhaps, or just unable to sleep. Frumpkin prowls back and forth, ears forward and a low yowl in his throat, though whether Caleb is riding along or Frumpkin is just an extension of his wizard’s emotions isn’t clear. 

Beau tosses and turns and punches her thoughts into a plan. 

They all wake with the sun, most rubbing their eyes and moving too sluggishly for a well-rested party. None of them will be at their best today. 

Nobody tries to talk during breakfast. Caduceus brews tea and shares it around, eliciting some murmurs of thanks. 

Beau sips from the mug. There are herbs in it, helping ease the physical aches from yesterday’s fight. She remembers her nightmare about the doors closing on her and shudders. She almost died. They all almost died. And for what? A mission for a Queen none of them owe allegiance to? For a friend none of them really knew at all?

“So, uh, we gotta message Essek.” Fjord breaks the silence. 

“Jester, you should write this down before you use the spell. It is important.” Caleb fumbles in his coat for a book.

Jester already has hers out. “Ok, what are we saying?” she asks. Her voice is strained.

“Well … Yasha unleashed some kinda dark god’s avatar –” Fjord starts. 

Jeser cuts him off. “That’s not true! Yasha didn’t unleash it, that Obann did! And then he did something to her mind!”

Fjord falters. “Jester, I didn’t mean …”

“You tried to help unleash Uk’atoa! We didn’t tell the Queen about that!” Jester’s eyes are dark.

Beau is standing next to Jester and the air suddenly feels colder. She wonders if this is a new ability, or just her perception gone strange after the bad night’s rest. 

“I’m not going to lie to the Queen or to Essek or anyone!” Jester slams her book down. “All we’ve done is lie, lie, lie … and look where it got us! Lying only makes trouble worse in the long run.” Her breath is coming out in visible puffs. “Maybe Yasha was lying to us … but now she’s trapped in that horrible place with that … that monster … and we can’t help her …” Jester buries her face in her hands. 

Fjord seems at a loss of what to do. He looks around at the others. 

Beau reaches over and pats Jester on the shoulder, and yeah, she’s much colder up close than she should be. “Hey, Jester, hey, nobody wants you to lie, ok?” she glares at Fjord. “We don’t know what happened down there exactly.”

“Yes we do.” Nott hisses. “We stumbled in, not knowing anything, and someone got hurt. It happens all the time, usually to me, because someone tells me to go ahead of everyone else.” Nott crosses her arms. “I’m sick of it. Every time I do that I think about Yeza and Luc. What if something happens to me? They won’t even have a body to take home!”

Everyone is silent for a moment. 

Beau takes the book. “Can I try writing something, Jester?”

Jester nods sullenly. 

Beau glares at the blank page and scrawls out “Target neutralized. Target unleashed Crawling Chaos avatar. It’s been sealed. Barriers are breaking. Mages urgently needed at Bazzozan. Please advise next actions.”

The others crowd around to read it. 

“Yeah I … I think that’ll do it.” Fjord says.

“Blunt. Direct. Doesn’t mention Yasha at all.” Caleb nods. 

“What if they tell us to fight that thing?” Nott protests. 

“We are the closest ones here,” Jester says. “And the war … so many of their people are far away …”

“That’s something for Essek and the Queen to figure out.” Beau says. 

“Everyone needs to know about that … that thing.” Caduceus shudders. 

“Jester, you feel ok with this message?” Fjord asks.

Jester nods. “Yes. It’s the truth. That’s important.” 

They’re all silent as Jester casts the spell. She reads the words carefully, brow furrowed in concentration. There’s no cheerful singing to fill the final spots in the spell. 

After a moment Jester blinds rapidly. “Oh, Essek says … he says he’s going to tell the Queen right away, and we should stay here, and they might want us to come back soon or wait for reinforcements … and he’s going to message me later.” Jester’s shoulders slumped. “That’s it.”

“Later?! But that thing is breaking through right now! It could already be out, coming here!” Nott looks at the door. “We should start running, as fast as we can.”

“You know Nott, for once I agree with you.” Fjord looks startled. “How about up north? To that Kiln?”

“What about Nicodranes?”

“My husband is still in the city …”

“I’m being drawn to the north …”

Beau slams her fist on the table. “We should wait until Essek messages Jester. We can’t go running off without information. Not anymore.” 

That makes everyone fall silent. 

“Let’s make sure the mounts are fed and ready to go, and we’re all packed ... in case we have to go fast.” Fjord suggests. 

The party gets busy. There’s not much to pack or stow, but they keep themselves going until midday. The mounts are fed and the saddles are readied. They purchase some new supplies. They look at the meager garrison and remember the hideous shambling monster with mouths and its chilling laughter. 

Around lunch, Jester suddenly freezes in place. She puts her hands over her ears. After a moment she says “Ok, I’ll tell them! See you later! Hope you’re ok! Uhhh … bye!” she gulps. “That was Essek. He says the Queen is sending mages here, powerful ones. And we can come back to the city if we want, or stay here, but it’s going to be dangerous here very soon.”

“That’s it?” Nott asks. 

“Did he sound angry?” Fjord looks sick. “Did he say if the Queen was angry?”

“You are sure he said we could say or go, we were not ordered to return?” Caleb squints. 

Jester shrugs. “He didn’t sound angry. And yes, he said we could come back or do what we like, but he advised us to get out of here soon because we’re not powerful enough to deal with that … thing.” 

They all erupt into a cloud of suggestions and proposals. The words blur together. Beau tries to pick out specifics and can’t make sense of most of it. Finally she holds up her hands. “STOP!”

Amazingly, the rest of them do. 

“Hang on, hang on,” Beau murmurs. She takes out a notebook of her own and scrawls several words on a page. “I think what might help is us figuring out our goals. All of them. And then we list them by short-term and long-term. And we start going down the list.”

Almost everyone in the group looks uncomfortable.

Beau sighs heavily. “Never mind, it’s stupid …”

“No!” Fjord speaks up. “No, I think that’s a good idea.” 

Caduceus nods slowly. “I have to find the Kiln. I’m being drawn there.”

“So that’d be a long-term goal? Or is it urgent?” Beau hasn’t heard him talk much about … anything, really, personal. 

Caduceus shrugs. “Long-term, I suppose.”

Beau writes that down. “Anyone else?” she’s looking at Fjord and Caleb in particular.

“Me.” Nott slams her flask down. “I was cursed. I want my body back. Even just a random Halfling woman body would be close enough. And then I want to leave this … this _horrible_ place and go home with my husband.” Nott’s voice cracks on the last word. 

Beau nods. “The stuff with the Queen, and their religion, there’s gotta be mages there who could help you. For favors, for money, we can help you get that.”

“Short term or long term, I don’t know, I just want this done.” Nott’s hands are shaking. She takes another drink. Her hands keep shaking. 

Beau marks Nott’s down as ‘short term.’

“Uh … my only thing is TravelerCon, technically.” Jester says. “But that’s ages away.”

“Yeah,” Beau marks it ‘long term.’ “Anything else, Jester? Anything you want to talk about maybe?” She’s thinking of Fjord. She’s thinking of finding Jester tied up in that horrible underground pit surrounded by torture implements. 

Jester shakes her head. “No. Just that, and getting Yasha back.”

Beau wants to push, she really does, but maybe now isn’t the time for that. There’ll be time for talking when they’re traveling to their short-term goals. 

“What about you, Beauregard?” Caleb asks. “Will your mentor be looking for you? Will they be angry?”

Beau hasn’t had a moment to stop and think about Dairon. “… oh, right.” She’s going to have to make a choice there. Tell Dairon everything, and risk a fight, possibly lose everything? Tell Dairon half the truth? Work as a double agent? What does she owe the Empire, what does she owe the monks of the Cobalt Soul? They’d been paid by her father to kidnap her, and they’d taken her away and locked her in a cell and beaten her when she’d tried to leave. 

“Beau?” Jester puts a hand on Beau’s arm. 

Beau sighs heavily. “I need to talk to Dairon. I need to get some things … settled. I’d appreciate some backup for that though, because she might be angry. Really angry.” Her stomach twists. It’s too much to ask of them, after everything with Yasha – 

“We’ll do it. We’ll be there for you.” Jester promises at once. 

Beau glances at the others. There’s some grim nodding and murmurs of agreement. She … honestly hadn’t expected that. For once, it feels good to be wrong. 

“So uh, that’s a … short term thing, because if she’s just wandering around out there with a different face that could be trouble later.” Beau writes that down. 

“What about you, Fjord?” Nott asks sharply. 

“What about me?” Fjord sounds calm but there’s a tense look in his eyes, a bit of shifting in his legs. He looks like he wants to run. 

“You. Your plans. What do you want? Are there more orbs for you to swallow? Is Uk’atoa angry?” Nott pushes. 

“I don’t … I’m not … I …” Fjord looks around at the group helplessly. “Caduceus! I’m … he’s … we’re … I want to go to that Kiln too. To talk to uh, Caduceus’ goddess.”

Beau blinks. Caleb looks pensive. Jester says “… huh?” Nott snorts. 

“So … is that like, short term, long term?” Beau asks. 

“Short term!” Fjord yelps. “Or, I mean, whatever, but …” 

None of the others seem to notice, but Beau sees Caduceus giving Fjord a meaningful look. 

“… yeah, short term. I’d appreciate it.” Fjord hangs his head. 

Beau writes that down, linking it with Caduceus’ name by a line. “That leaves you, Caleb.” She says, keeping her eyes down for a moment. She’s bracing herself for the inevitable agonizing process it will take to pry things out of Caleb, like prying open a locked chest with a crowbar. 

When Beau looks up, Caleb meets her eyes steadily. “I want to continue to curry favor with the Queen and her court. It is the best way forward for me to gain access to their spells, and further my own research.”

Beau glares at him. That’s not the whole truth, not by a longshot. If even half the stuff he’s told her in the past is true, there’s so much more going on in Caleb’s head right now. 

“Long term, right?” Beau says simply, deciding to leave it there for now.

“Yes.” Caleb’s face is a mask. 

Beau finishes the list and puts the book down so they can all look at her notes. 

“Ok, so …” Beau looks at the group. “Where to first?”


End file.
